The Trump Presidency

We are reminded that Paul Manafort is the main guy responsible for getting Mike Pence his current job. Very few people know exactly why Manafort wanted Pence in the VP slot - but that group probably includes Mueller's team, now.

Click to expand...

the likes of manafort would not do such a thing for free.
it is a capitalist society.
these things have a price tag.
he would have been paid to do so.
that is the capitalist way.

people crying foul for such a thing as US citizens would be likened to left wing socialists by the main stream US society.

When you're 10 minutes late delivering a pizza, you get chewed out by everyone involved and your career aspirations are immediately jeopardized.

Click to expand...

in the USA, the richer you are, the less honest you are expected to be.
you are also held to a lower level of morality and a far more liberal interpretion, even if your a right wing conservative.
queue endles sex scandals of married men

Google AdSenseGuest Advertisement

Hostile nuclear power has potentially compromising info on a bizarrely submissive, mentally unstable president they are alleged to have helped elect. Man involved in dealings has already confessed to knowing the details. Know what? Superbowl's coming soon, maybe we should just put the whole thing off for a while and give his lawyers time to write it all up as a novella, save waterboarding for the late pizza guy.

Google AdSenseGuest Advertisement

Hostile nuclear power has potentially compromising info on a bizarrely submissive, mentally unstable president they are alleged to have helped elect. Man involved in dealings has already confessed to knowing the details. Know what? Superbowl's coming soon, maybe we should just put the whole thing off for a while and give his lawyers time to write it all up as a novella, save waterboarding for the late pizza guy.

Click to expand...

Which is why I feel there is considerably more at stake than Trump's impeachment or jailing or even Republican disempowerment.
I feel that the Mueller investigation is dealing with something that NEEDS Trump to stay in office for the time being. The consequences involved may be considerably more damaging than what is currently being speculated upon.

We can’t say this loud enough or often enough, and we have to say it while we still can (see White Rose Society): Fascism sneaks in the back door. That is the German experience, slowly, over time, it just sort of happened. Milton Mayer writes in his book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945 not overnight, incrementally, like the legendary slow boiling of frogs

FISA applications and warrants are some of the most secret documents in the government. The warrants are supposed to be used to gather intelligence on people suspected of being agents of a foreign power.

This is what happens when such breaches of security are not prosecuted, and travesties of men like Dick Cheney are left undisturbed in their comfortable post-disaster retirements.

Manafort also headed the campaign while, court papers say, the Russian government was actively trying to influence the election. And his ties to prominent Russian and Ukrainian businessmen also offer prosecutors a wealth of information they can use for not only the Russia probe but also potentially other investigations.

That includes continued government scrutiny of law firms and Washington lobbying shops, such as Skadden Arps, Mercury Public Affairs and the now-defunct Podesta Group, which took part in Manafort’s unregistered lobbying work.

With Manafort’s deal, Mueller has now secured six guilty pleas and a trial conviction and has pending indictments against three companies and 26 individuals including 12 Russian intelligence officers. Two other investigations that Mueller referred to other U.S. attorneys have also resulted in guilty pleas. That includes a probe of longtime Trump fixer Michael Cohen.

This is thoroughly unsurprising, and it probably has as much to do with McFarland withdrawing her nomination to be Ambassador to Singapore as did any concerns about a confirmation hearing where her past lies to Congress would be an issue.
- - -
Nor is it surprising that McFarland was able to clear up her testimony (indeed, the WaPo notes that Sean Spicer was telling similar lies as McFarland was telling, so he may have also had to have cleaned up testimony). She’s got a serious attorney, Robert Giuffra, and unlike George Papadopoulos she (presumably) didn’t do anything stupid, like deleting her entire Facebook account, when she tried to clean up her lies. That happens in cases like this (especially where the witnesses are powerful enough to fight a false statements case aggressively). Remember that Karl Rove cleaned up his testimony in the Plame investigation four different times.

Click to expand...

The events of W's administration are going to keep surfacing, just like Reagan's have. This is a Republican presidency.

Hostile nuclear power has potentially compromising info on a bizarrely submissive, mentally unstable president they are alleged to have helped elect. Man involved in dealings has already confessed to knowing the details. Know what? Superbowl's coming soon, maybe we should just put the whole thing off for a while and give his lawyers time to write it all up as a novella, save waterboarding for the late pizza guy.

Click to expand...

(i am being a little ott as in a modern world it seems incongruous to modern diplomacy that the main 5 technalogical states of the 1st world are at war with each other as deemed to be "hostile".)

. Well, I need to disagree with a few of your assertions. First, Russia's economy is a mixed economy just as are most economies including the American economy. Two, the Germany isn't a nuclear power. Three, you are erroneously conflating economic systems with political systems. Communism is a political system, not an economic system. Russia, Germany, UK, France, and the US are all mixed economies. Fourth, Russia is in fact a fascist state.

. Well, I need to disagree with a few of your assertions. First, Russia's economy is a mixed economy just as are most economies including the American economy. Two, the Germany isn't a nuclear power. Three, you are erroneously conflating economic systems with political systems. Communism is a political system, not an economic system. Russia, Germany, UK, France, and the US are all mixed economies. Fourth, Russia is in fact a fascist state.

Click to expand...

maybe i should have put "i am being VERY over the top"
satire...
with extreme stero types
my intent was to illistrate the wide variety of different ideas and concepts around how people percieve concepts of state leadership models, from religous to socio-political.
my intent was not to misslead.

maybe i should have put "i am being VERY over the top"
satire...
with extreme stero types
my intent was to illistrate the wide variety of different ideas and concepts around how people percieve concepts of state leadership models, from religous to socio-political.
my intent was not to misslead.

Abstract
There is a broad consensus among students of contemporary Russia that the political system constructed by Vladimir Putin is authoritarian and that he plays a dominant role in it. By building and expanding on these two features and by engaging in a deconstruction and reconstruction of the concept of fascism, this article suggests that the Putin system may plausibly be termed fascist. Not being a type of group, disposition, politics, or ideology, fascism may be salvaged from the conceptual confusion that surrounds it by being conceived of as a type of authoritarian political system. Fascism may be defined as a popular fully authoritarian political system with a personalistic dictator and a cult of the leader—a definition that makes sense conceptually as well as empirically, with respect to Putin's Russia and related fascist systems.

Click to expand...

"are you not entertained" ?

he has hardly "done it to them". your assertion of "his" in this example seems a little obtuse.
your atmospherics suggest russel crows position in this movie.

while i do not know his level of intellectual ability, i would suggest it unlikely that any 1 person could manipulate the country to make it their own.
thus your label is a little distracting.
The "vision" of russia that the russian people support is equally a product of what they are happy to accept ?
if we were to start an intellectual debate on the issue i would take note of the reason behind the removal of the nature of the self from the mechanism of the state body being a system OF the people.
would it not be interchangalbe for "Trumps america"?
is not the assertion of the term of reference to the self derisive as a slight ?
maybe i missinterpret how people/you use the expresion.

Fascism may be defined as a popular fully authoritarian political system with a personalistic dictator and a cult of the leader

Click to expand...

a cult like "patriotism" like demanding paid profesionals who you do not manage or pay to stand for the national anthem in their place of work ?
while seeking to legally and financialy and publicly punish those employees whom you do not employ for not standing during the national anthem at private sports games ?

i am not yet at a point of ability to agree nor dissagree with you as your terms of refenrece are outside my ability to equate them to note a difference... and the inflection of implied theme is quite polarising.

Perhaps whether fascist or not can be better determined by the reality of the democracy involved. Whether free elections are held with out police oppression of the opposition etc.
If this were to be the case then sure Russia seems to fit the label of Fascist state.

The government practices collective punishment for alleged anti-state offenses, effectively enslaving hundreds of thousands of citizens, including children, in prison camps and other detention facilities. Detainees face deplorable conditions, sexual coercion and abuse, beatings and torture by guards, and forced labor in dangerous and sometimes deadly conditions.

Those accused of serious political offenses are usually sent to political prison camps, known as kwanliso, operated by North Korea’s National Security Agency. These camps are characterized by systematic abuses, including meager rations that imperil health and can lead to starvation, virtually no medical care, lack of proper housing and clothes, regular mistreatment including sexual assault and torture by guards, and public executions. Political prisoners face backbreaking forced labor, including in logging, mining, and agricultural.

UN officials estimate that between 80,000 and 120,000 people are imprisoned in political prison camps.​

Perhaps whether fascist or not can be better determined by the reality of the democracy involved. Whether free elections are held with out police oppression of the opposition etc.
If this were to be the case then sure Russia seems to fit the label of Fascist state.